The large-scale manufacture of steel coils is a multi-stage process. The term large-scale refers to steel mills that process raw iron ore to produce finished steel products. In contrast, mini-mills typically begin with comparatively smaller quantities of scrap steel that is re-melted to produce finished steel products. Generally, a steel mill processes molten iron to molten steel having a desired range of chemical and physical characteristics. The molten metal is then cast into discrete slabs in a continuous casting operation, and these slabs are eventually flattened and rolled into coils at a hot strip mill.
At each stage of the steel manufacturing process, numerous process constraints and business objectives guide the operation of the manufacturing resources involved. Optimization systems can handle individually, the highly detailed constraints and objectives of a particular part of the process. For example, optimization systems may be directed to upstream molten metal handling or downstream hot strip mill (HSM) operations. However, due to inherent difficulties, the prior art fails to link independent optimization systems (or modules) in an integrated optimization framework. The difficulties are derived from the detailed nature of the constraints and objectives that guide each optimization module. Therefore one problem with developing and building a tightly coupled optimization system that models all aspects of the manufacturing process is that it leads to computationally large and intractable models for the computing environments typically deployed at steel mills.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an optimization method that addresses all the subsystems of the manufacturing process. Further, there is a need for an optimization method to provide an efficient and effective mechanism to achieve integrated process optimization in a manufacturing process, such as a large scale steel manufacturing facility.